No travel to speak of today. We had breakfast at the hotel, went to a supercharger for a while before driving to the Discovery Center which opened at 10am. There are three independent museums at the Center. One is a children's science museum (similar to ScienceWorks in Ashland). There is TrainTopia and one called the National Videogame Museum. Since Bruce's son is in the videogame industry we had to visit that one. TrainTopia was our principal reason for going there. They have a huge G scale layout inside and a large number of full sized historic trains outdoors. We signed up for a guided tour of the outside facilities. They are still under construction; we saw some new tracks being laid for better presentation of the engines and cars that they have, plus room for even more to be added. In the afternoon, after our train tour, we went to a nearby AMC Cinema and saw "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves." It was kind of silly but altogether fun to watch. That was followed by dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant then back to the hotel. Plans are to get up early tomorrow and drive toward (if not to) New Orleans.
The first thing you see upon entering the Videogame Museum is a collection of large
statues of familiar characters.
There is a display of various game playing consoles through the years.
Here is an exhibit of the popular game, Donkey Kong, as played on nine different
game consoles.
There was a large room full of arcade games. We were given a handfull of tokens
when we paid our admission fee. When we left, we gave most of them to a woman who
seemed to be in charge of a group of fifth graders.
On to the train museum.
Here is a view of the indoor layout showing the workmanship and lovely bridges.
This is the engine house and turntable. Bruce has been making hardware and software for operating turntables.
These mesas reminded us of our trip through the Southwest several days ago.
Another view of the turntable.
In all model railroad scales can buy model cars (and model people). Here is a nice
drive-in movie complex. According to their website, they can actually show movies on
the screen.
The first thing we saw outside was a Northern 4-8-4 steam locomotive. That means that
there are 4 guide wheels in the front, 8 driver wheels in the middle and 4 trailing wheels
at the back.
The Northern was fired by oil. Here is a better view of the tender (and our guide).
This is the largest diesel-electric engine ever made.
One of the largest steam engine ever made was nicknamed Big Boy. It's a 4-8-8-4, is
about 130 feet long, and weighs 1.12 million pounds.
We took a picture of the folks laying a new track for the museum. If you look
closely, you can see the air hammer that was being used to drive the spikes that
held down the rail.
Finally, at the end of the day, we had put in 35 miles driving around town.
